While the President’s Council on Bioethics debated moral and scientific
issues surrounding a number of potential scenarios for creating stem cells
without destroying live embryos, real-world actions seemed to make the exercise
almost irrelevant.

In the days following the May 12 release of the council’s white
paper, “Alternative Sources of Human Pluripotent Stem Cells,”
researchers from South Korea announced they developed an efficient method
for creating embryos through cloning. (Their report was published on May 19
in an online edition of Science [http://www.sciencemag.org].) A week later, the US House of Representatives passed a bill that
would loosen the prohibition of federal funding for research using new stem
cell lines by allowing the use of excess embryos slated for destruction at
fertility clinics. Still, with President Bush reiterating on May 24 that he
would veto any bill easing the use of fertilized embryos, the council’s
findings appear to be the current blueprint that would lead to federally funded
stem cell research.